Modular Homes New Jersey: A Quality Product?
For many people the idea of modular homes is frightening, as they associate them with the low quality of mobile homes. Modular construction is held to the same construction standards as other stick-built homes, and modular businesses often have more control over processes and materials than a traditional contractor does.
Modular Construction
In modular construction, individual sections of your house are built in a factory setting. The modular build follows the same legal requirements for spacing, electrical and plumbing standards as on-site homes. Each section of the house is manufactured according to the original design and layout, and shipped to your build site, where final assembly is completed.
For many people this seems odd, since limited amounts of work are done on-site by construction workers. But, the advantages of this type of construction are several. One of the most significant advantages is the factory’s quality and safety standards, which will be necessarily higher than a contractor’s general construction crew. With a modular construction team, the people who built your walls are specialists in wall building, and a good modular construction team will have consistent specialization across the board.
Modular construction gives home owners the same standard of construction as commercial development businesses use. When a company builds apartment buildings, they have people on staff to build walls, do plumbing, finish electrical, etc. This is how they build so many large properties with high quality and low cost. Homes are designed with more variety than most commercial buildings. Therefore, the modular home design is a perfect combination of versatility (any design you want) and factory precision and quality.
Processes
Because of the quality available through the production of segments of your home on a factory floor, many modular construction teams build an entire process of quality. Quality processes include using in-house teams across the board, focus on more than profit, and offering complete services from design to final finishing and landscaping.
In-house teams are not used by traditional contractors because each employee a contractor hires requires more jobs per year, and more costs per job in order to stay in business. A modular construction team meets their costs by focusing on building quality houses fast. While on-site construction takes months, a modular building can go from design to finished product in weeks. This increased speed gives the team the ability to keep construction, plumbing, electrical and other specialists available for your project.
Keeping the entire construction process within one team is the first step toward quality processes. The next step is building a team that focuses on more than profit. W Edwards Deming, the father of statistical quality control, had several points in his 14 principles of management which put employees, competitive processes, and quality product over profit. Modular companies can do this in several ways: through working with their teams to make a streamlined, seamless quality construction process, through understanding the business environment, and enacting total recycling protocols.
Materials
The final aspect of modular construction which increases quality over on-site construction is material sourcing. Material sourcing includes the processes by which the construction company handles materials, where they buy them, and what relationships they develop with their source providers.
Relationships between a materials provider and your construction team affect the quality of materials, as well as the cost of materials. With the economy of scale that modular construction companies get by nature of the business, the one aspect to look for in quality construction is control of their materials. You could have the best construction team, but without material controls, your home will not be a quality build.
A proper relationship with materials sources can also save money in quality areas, like using re-usable paint containers and sending empty ones back to the manufacturer: this saves on packaging costs and reduces waste, producing a higher quality product.
If you are ready to build a home in Pennsylvania, or New Jersey, why not contact us for more information about quality modular construction?